Could the computer savvy Redditors help with a computer issue?

My brother is having a lot of issues with his Toshiba laptop. I have only ever used macintosh computers, so I am completely useless when it comes to helping him, hence my plea for advice from the most tech savvy community I know. The computer is a basic model from around 2007. He uses the computer to browse the internet (using Internet Explorer 6 >.<), AIM, play flash games and get music.

He has had a lot of virus issues in the past, mostly stemming from downloading music on Limewire (which I understand is a more virus ridden place then a hooker's snatch). To fix this, he takes his computer to a "Virus Doctor" who charges him 100 bucks to make the computer work again. After shelling out the dough a couple of times, he decided to buy McAfee anti-virus software, and stop using limewire. He uses the McAfee software to "run scans" daily and I think it's always doing some bullshit in the background to "protect" the computer.

Recently he has been unable to open Internet Explorer and browse the internet. He thinks it's a virus again, but I don't really know. I have given him the following advice:

Ditch IE6 and pursue Chrome or Firefox as a browser

Use an adblock (I think he clicks on a lot of those ads that are associated with viruses)

Get a better antivirus software (any specific ones?)

Use Rhapsody or Pandora for music (I tried to help him with bittorrent stuff in the passed, but I think it's too bothersome for him. Any better suggestions for music and media?)

I have additional questions for Reddit:

Anyone have a simple explanation for how virus work, how they get on the computer, and how to stop them?

Is the "Virus Doctor" a scam? What do you do to fix a computer that has viruses?

How do you know if there are viruses on the computer? (McAfee says it's clean, but who fucking knows)

tl;dr Toshiba 2007 laptop will not run IE6, has had virus/trojan problems in the past and has been fucked around with by possibly sketchy paid computer technicians. What issues could cause the computer to not run IE6, what browser should replace it, what is a better antivirus software than McAfee, what are some easy-to-use music programs, and what is a good adblock thing?

Adblocking and pop-up blocking will help a lot. Get him to ditch his Windows Live account (I'm assuming he uses shitty web based mail) and get him a Gmail account or something which can sniff out spam better.

First thing you wanna do is download better protection. You're gonna want to get Spybot S&D and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, both free and better than McAfee. Tell him to stop using Limewire, that's definitely what got him the virus. Download either Chrome or Firefox, IE6 is useless. If he wants to get music, tell him he absolutely has to either buy it or get it from Pirate Bay or something. Not sure about this Virus Doctor thing, but there's not much that they can do that you can't.

Also, ask the techsupport subreddit, those guys are scary good with this sort of thing.

malware works in all sorts of way. more malicious software can hide itself deep in your computer and be next to impossible to remove without reformatting the system; which is more often than not a better choice for heavily infected Windows installs.

It could be something like a baited link that runs javascript. It could an ad he clicked allowing software to get installed. He could be like my father and believe or have to check every FUCKING last piece of spam in his email.

Erm, first things first, if you have access to the machine.

If he uses IE6 to browse than... ahem update that to IE8 NOW!

IE8/Chrome/Firefox will be fine but IE6 is NOT ok, it's a security breach waiting to happen.

Start > Run > Msconfig

check the startup tab for any perculiar looking entries "assfdege3" etc., you can try disabling any unknown items. Don't remove them yet, you'll notice they have a filepath to where the file is, this is helpful when removing things.

If you find any odd entries try searching for them, it -may- help locate what he's infected with.

Do as Mogart said and install spybot AND malware bytes.

I suggest disabling mcafee to avoid conflicts when scanning for malware. (you can do this by disabling the services (start > run > services.msc and look for the mcafee entries and disabling the startup entries.))

Scan for malware in safemode (push f8 right after post (that beep/booting screen) to bring up the menu prompt to select safemode)

If it's a more vile infection than you might have best luck backing up his data, reformatting and setting up security before hand (patch that bitch quick and get some GOOD software on there (to note spybot offers an immunization option that can save users from a lot of troubles) (I use autopatcher)

Sorry I'm a bit all over with this reply, just waking up.

And if I could teach my tardo-father (I call him this purely cause he thinks he's computer savvy) how to use utorrent and torrent trackers than I'd think your friend might just be lazy. Cause torrents are many times easier to use to grab media. Oh and soulseek?

K, having him ditch IE6 is definitely the way to go and using ad block on firefox will help significantly reduce the chance of getting viruses or trojans off the web. As for antivirus program I highly recommend Gdata, I started using it this year and have been very impressed, if you prefer to go the free antivirus route then Microsoft defender is the way to go. As for the so called Virus Doctor I definitely think its a scam, $100 for a guy to pretty much format a computer reinstall windows is insane, and for the most part a search on the web can provide you with a solution to most problems you will face and save you money. Had the same problem once with IE turned out to be a trojan had hijacked it can't remember the name though, this was at least a couple years ago. Check task manager to see if IE is running coz that what happened with me it was running in there but wouldn't open to allow me access and ending the task just had it restart again. I can't remember if I used Combofix to remove it or if that was another time. As for music do you want to download or stream?

Thanks for the tips!! He has several MP3 players but does not use any of them. In the past he would just download music through limewire and then play it in windows media player. He doesn't really listen to music now because he doesn't know how to safely. I think streaming would be great, because he has wifi and he doesn't need downloaded files or anything.

Well if he wants to stream music almost every thing can be found on youtube ( obvious and sure you have thought of it) or last fm which can also be quite useful. I would also recommend that u try and get him to use torrents again, if my father was able to do it, I'm sure he will be fine, coz its like riding a bike you only need to learn it once.

Personally I'd use Malwarebytes or Microsoft Security Essentials but as corney as this sounds the best tools for dealing with viruses is prevention i.e avoiding sketchy websites and downloads, update windows/virus scanner frequently etc. If you encounter more virus problems this forum is a free community run service that will talk you through cleaning an infected machine

As for ie6 not working a part of it could have become infected back when he had the virus problems and needed to be removed.

A replacement browser is down to preference. I use Chrome with ad block and scripts disabled . Firefox also has an extension called no-script which also does the job. for security its important to block both ads and scripts for browsing.

Use torrent sites instead of lime wire as they have a feedback and comment section for each torrent so you'll know if a file is clean or not or just Pandora if you only want to stream it but if you do download use your virus scanner to check it before opening any files

My problem with MSE is it's a huge resource hog and is not that good at offering protection. It's a decent free tool but in my opinion there are far better, less clunky, more effective tools out there for free. It's missed plenty of malware pieces that Spybot picked up instantly in the past. And in my personal experience using the software it doesn't work well with other redundant applications installed.

Grooveshark is an amazing service to use; never heard of freecoder, despite the intrusive methods I think it's a fine app if it works. (almost all installers use anymore :|)

I run it alongside spybot and adaware. I find it uses less resources then Avast or MalWare and does a better job, IMO. Freecorder is a nice little app that records any audio on your comp and will save it as an mp3 or whatever file format you need. So i just stream and record.